


the other side of the coin

by Cookie_Thief



Category: Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Adachi as Minako's Father, Mitsuru as Minako's overbearing mom, Team as Family, souyo in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 03:08:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11637672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookie_Thief/pseuds/Cookie_Thief
Summary: Minako’s dad is a monster.Not literally. Probably. Maybe. She’s not quite willing to rule it out- there’s always been something not quite human in his eyes. He might be a literal monster. She’s open to the possibility.She’s not sure what she’s going to do about it. She’d been willing to shut her eyes at night and pretending nothing was wrong with him back when her mother and brother were still alive, but not anymore.She doesn’t know why she’s still alive either. It’s probably because she’s useful to him: another a shield to protect him from suspicion. It couldn’t be him, he’s a cop. It couldn’t be him, he’s Minako-chan’s dad. It couldn’t be him, not Adachi-san, he’s just so harmless.It is him, though, and Minako is the only one left alive who knows.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i) how swiftly the orphans set sail! no sooner does the starting gun fire than they’re flying! their yachts are slimmer, their lines trimmer than ours – than our stodgy barges. they drag no anchors, they haul no ballast, they toss all baggage overboard, and the one flag they ever hoist is blank. no wonder they pull out of the bay ahead of the rest, no wonder they round the cape so briskly! but what now? they won’t stay on bourse, they won’t play by the well-wrought rules, they despise the prize. they’re headed for the open sea. they’re sailing into the sun. they’re gone.
> 
> \- Orphan Stories, Margaret Atwood

Minako’s dad is a monster.

Not literally. Probably. Maybe. She’s not quite willing to rule it out- there’s always been something not quite human in his eyes. He might be a literal monster. She’s open to the possibility.

That wasn’t what she meant, though.

Her dad is a monster in the way the child abusers and serial killers are monsters. And dirty cops, which is what he is.

She’s not sure what she’s going to do about it. She’d been willing to shut her eyes at night and pretending nothing was wrong with him back when her mother and brother were still alive, but not anymore.

She doesn’t know why she’s still alive either. It’s probably because she’s useful to him: another a shield to protect him from suspicion. It couldn’t be him, he’s a cop. It couldn’t be him, he’s Minako-chan’s dad. It couldn’t be him, not Adachi-san, he’s just so harmless.

It is him, though, and Minako is the only one left alive who knows.

 

She shows up at Tatsumi Port Island with nothing but a sad backstory, a note guiding her to her new dorm, and whatever she could fit into her suitcase. Adachi wouldn’t let her take a second suitcase, because he apparently needed four suitcases to pack up his non-existent personal effects to take with him to his new job in Inaba.

He’s still mad at her for getting him kicked out of town. The only reason she’s still alive is because he couldn’t prove it was her, and because having a cute daughter is always a good way to draw off suspicion.

She couldn’t believe her luck when he’d told her he was sending her off to some dorm off on some island city. He probably thought it was a punishment- that’s the kind of person he was. After everything, he probably still thought she wanted to be around him.

She feels a little guilty for being so happy, because he’s probably just going to go do the same exact thing in a new town. But there’s nothing she can do about that from this far away. That’s why he sent her here, after all. She wonders idly if he planned to just abandon her in this city. If he was done with her now. If he really thinks he is, well, then he has another thing coming.

Adachi might be done with her, but she’s not done with him.

 

The dorm is weird, and its inhabitants are pretty obvious about whatever secret they’re holding, but she’s grateful for it nonetheless.

Her room is small and poorly heated, but it’s hers. She immediately sets about decorating it, setting up a calendar and throwing a gaggle of stuffed animals on the bedspread.

She ties up her hair tight and puts in her brother’s pins, and sets about living again.

She likes Yukari, secrets aside, and Junpei is sweet if clueless. Without the drawback of her popularity helping out Adachi, she’s free to make friends and get involved at school.

She can’t say she has any close friends yet, but she’s certainly not lacking for company.

Life is good, all in all. Sometimes she imagines she can see her brother out of the corner of her eye, or that she can hear her mother calling her. She’s learned, though. She never turns her head to check anymore.

 

Things were going good, which of course meant that something was about to happen. It happens early in her stay, with Yukari banging on her door and screaming that they need to move. She follows her, through a confusing a conversation with Mitsuru, through Akihiko’s injury, through to the roof.

There’s… something up there. Yukari calls it a shadow, but that’s not what it looks like. It looks like a void.

Yukari pulls out a gun and presses it to her head, but she gets hit before she can pull the trigger. The gun falls, sliding over to Minako’s foot. She reaches down to grab it, to- well she hasn’t thought that far ahead.

She could shoot the monster, she supposes, but it doesn’t look like the kind of thing that would be hurt by a bullet. Yukari had pressed it to her head, hadn’t she? She wasn’t sure what good it would do, but she mimicked Yukari anyway.

It feels right, the gun pressed against her temple, which should worry her.

She takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger.

 

Her mother dies when she’s eight.

Such a tragedy, everyone in town says.

She was a whore, her dad says.

You’re the one who killed her, her brother says.

I miss mom, she says.

Shut up, her dad says.

You’re the one who killed her, her brother yells.

Minato doesn’t come home that night, or any night after that.

 

She wakes up in the hospital, with Adachi sitting in the seat next to her bed.

She shut her eyes immediately.

This isn’t where she wants to be. She wants to be on that rooftop, back in that moment where the sheer power of Orpheus had almost knocked her over. Being inside and outside of herself at the same time, something more than the sum of her parts.

“She told me about you, y’know.” Apparently she hadn’t been quick enough to fool Adachi.

“Who?” She says.

She can’t decide whether or not to open her eyes. Leaving them closed gives Adachi an advantage she’s really not comfortable with him having, but she also really doesn’t want to look at him. She settles for peering out from behind her lashes.

“The wife.”

“Who?”

“God. I’d forgotten how stupid you are.” He snaps. “Keep up. The wife.”

She isn’t hurt by the comment. Adachi isn’t quite as clever as he thinks he is either.

“I can’t quite figure out why she’d want to give power like that to a brat like you though.”

“She didn’t.” She says. “It was…. Someone else.”

She’s not really sure, actually, where the power came from. She guesses that contract she’d signed had something to do with it, but there was no way to really know. Had the others also signed a contract with Igor?

It was typically, really. Adachi tainted anything she’d ever wanted. Her family, her friends. Her power.

“Hmph. That’d make sense. My power isn’t like yours, anyway. I’m on a whole different level from you.”

She hopes so, really. The thought of having anything more tying her to Adachi is disquieting.

“Don’t you have lives to destroy?” She says instead.

He stares her down, considering. She can hear her Yukari and Junpei chatting in the hallway. He wouldn’t try to kill her with them right outside. And he’s in a good mood, meaning he’s having fun doing whatever he’s doing in Inaba. He wouldn’t want to jeopardize that.

There’s that guilt, again.

And, worst of all, she knows he still wants her for something.

“Yeah,” he laughs, high and fake and meaningless, “I guess I do.”

 

Minako tends to think she’s a good person. She’s not cruel, and she’s not a killer.

But sometimes, when she thinks about her father… she wishes.

She finds out the reason for his mirth two days after she leaves the hospital. She’s on her way to Tartarus with the others, chatting aimlessly with Yukari, when she stops short. Mayumi Amano’s face is plastered on the screen, along with a big bold title: MURDERS IN INABA.

It’s moving along earlier than usual, then. Not his normal way either- he usually liked to play with them, to make them think and say this and that, until they bored him. And then, he’d make a suggestion, just a comment here or there, until they decided the world was better off without them. He got a reputation for it too: Adachi-san, always trying to help the helpless.

Well, he’d had one until she’d gone and ruined it. The thought still brings a smile to her face.

Corpses hanging off antenna didn’t really sound like Adachi, but the immediate death of a successful woman after she crossed paths with him? That gave it dead away.

“Uh… Minako?” Yukari says. “You okay over there?”

“Yeah, Minako-chan, do you not want to go to Tartarus anymore? Are you scared? Because if you are, I can always-“

She stops listening then. She is scared, but not of Tartarus. No, it’s something much more deadly that worries her.

 

Tartarus is cold, and dark, and brutal. She loves it.

It leaves her gasping for breath, her muscles burning pleasantly. She and Junpei and Yukari have become a stellar team, shifting to accommodate each other’s weakness and strengths immediately. They’d all been surprised, to realize she could draw more than one persona, but then they’d decided to make her the field leader, so it’d all gone well.  
She starts hanging out with Yukari and Junpei after class, and they become close rather quickly. Yukari confides in her about her father and her mother, laughing about how both of them were missing a parent. Between the two of them, Yukari laughs, they have one whole family.

Maybe, Minako thinks, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

She and Junpei also get along well, despite his jealousy. She understands his complaints about his deadbeat dad, chiming in with her own memories, watered down and censored, but her own nonetheless.

“Really?” He says when he finds out. “You just seemed so well adjusted.”

I watched him wash my brother’s blood off his hands, she thinks. Out loud, she just laughs and drags him to another corner of the arcade, where she proceeds to destroy him at every single game.

The only person she doesn’t like is Ikutsuki. It doesn’t have anything to do with him, to be fair. Only, he laughs like Adachi at the same shitty jokes and, like Adachi, he likes to hide behind her back when the going gets tough.

It’s probably nothing. She can’t exactly go around killing everyone who reminded her of her father.

 

The next one to die is Saki Konishi, some school girl her age. She wonders if he tried to fuck her like everyone else he killed, and then shuts down that train of thought before she does something rash. It happens on a full moon, and she’s lucky it does. The rage makes her faster, stronger. It saves Yukari and Junpei more than once.

In her idle moments, she considers telling Mitsuru what she knows. The older girl is cold, sure, but she has a strong sense of justice, and S.E.E.S. was meant to do more than just climb up a tower. But she remembers the way Mitsuru talks about her father, clearly yearning for his approval, and she never does.

 

Akihiko is the next one to join them, and she’s glad for it.

He’s strong, fast, smart, and… really good looking, which is always a plus.

In Tartarus, he’s priceless. He can handle all the shadows with ease, and he spares her from having to cover lightning attacks. He can heal himself too, which eases the weight on Yukari’s back.

He’s fun to hang around with, even though his fangirls definitely make it a struggle to reach him after school. A little weird, maybe, but she’s more than happy to train with him after school.

She needs to get stronger, and not just for Tartarus. Eventually, he starts talking to her about his family and his childhood. Growing up alone, trying to protect his sister, only to have her die anyway. He wouldn’t appreciate her crying for him, so she waits until she’s alone to do that. After she’s done crying, she thinks for one brief moment that she’d rather have lived his life than hers, and hates herself for it.

 

After they save Fuuka, Mitsuru decides to join the field team.

Minako half expected to have to give up control, to be expected to follow her orders now. She dreads the moment when Mitsuru finally says that she’s in charge now, thanks for the service but Minako isn’t really needed anymore. Something ugly inside of her rears its head every time she thinks of it, and to be honest the bitter voice in her head sounds a lot like her father. Mitsuru hasn’t brought it up yet, even seems to be reluctant to go into Tartarus. She hangs back in fights, always dutiful but not quite enthusiastic. Anyone else, Minako would’ve asked if they were okay or told them to put their back into it, but Mitsuru is in charge of her, not the other way around. It’s almost frightening, knowing that Mitsuru, for all her hesitation and poorly concealed anxiety, is able to match any of them.

The other problem with Mitsuru joining is that not everyone can go every night anymore. And, apart from Mitsuru, everyone does want to go. They’d tried to take a team of five, but it had been a disaster, with people constantly bumping into each other and Minako losing track of who was doing what.

The upside is that now she has Fuuka, whose skill and sheer power constantly amazes them all. Fuuka is made of softness and care, and Minako feels calmer every time she’s in her presence.

It’s hard, sometimes, but it’s the closest Minako has come to family in a long time.

 

They meet Aigis at Yakushima.

She’s a little weird, but being an android is as good a defense as any for a little oddness, and one of Minako’s closest friends is a knife-wielding dog.

She likes Aigis. Loves her, even, because Aigis is made of hard edges and impenetrable armor but she’s powered by earnestness and conviction. She’s not sure Aigis would appreciate the sentiment. She isn’t even sure if Aigis would understand the sentiment. Aigis has told her a few dozen times now, usually in the mornings after she’s snuck into Minako’s room, that Minako is her number one priority. That’s probably as close as Aigis comes to love.

Minako loves Aigis, but it’d be a lie to say Aigis is her number one priority. Her number one priority is Adachi, as always. One day she’s going to find him, and stop him, and then-

She never quite gets that far.

 

She gets sick almost immediately after they get the new members of the team. A pity, because she really wanted to get to know them.

Surprisingly, it’s Shinjiro who spends the most time taking care of her, followed closely by Mitsuru.

The others visit, or try to, but Shinjiro and Mitsuru, using some sort of upperclassmen mind meld, manage to stop all attempts to access her until she gets better. Junpei and Yukari try to tag team the door, with Junpei making a commotion in an attempt to draw them out and Yukari running to try to get in. It almost works, but Mitsuru is quick enough to catch them, and Yukari is granted the dubious honor of being the first girl to suffer at the hand of Mitsuru’s executions.

Akihiko gets the closest, opting for the window instead of the door, but Shinjiro gives him one unimpressed look and casually shuts the window before Akihiko can swing all the way in.

Fuuka, as is her way, doesn’t pull any stunts. Instead, she sends Minako a cute text telling her to get better quickly.

It’s heartwarming, but her sickness is worrying. On the third day of her fever, Mitsuru goes through her files and finds Adachi’s number.

“Don’t worry, Arisato.” She says in what is clearly meant to be a comforting voice. “I’m going to call your father.”

“Please don’t.” Minako grits out.

“You’re really sick, Arisato. He should know.”

“He should go throw himself off a cliff.” She coughs. “Or three.”

Mitsuru frowns severely, her fine features contorted by disapproval.

“I understand that you’re uncomfortable Arisato, but that’s no reason to be cruel.”

“Arisato.” She snaps. “That’s my name. Not Adachi. Arisato.”

“You’re delirious, you’re barely making sense. I’m sorry, but it’s not really up to me. Dorm policy is very strict.” Mitsuru says, already flipping open her phone.

Minako groans and flops over to make a halfhearted attempt to smother herself in her pillows. Somewhere past her pillows and blankets she can hear Mitsuru quietly explaining the situation over the phone. She turns towards her just as Mitsuru finishes.

She can’t quite hear what Adachi says to her, but Mitsuru’s rapidly paling face worries her. Mitsuru says nothing, just listens to whatever bullshit Adachi is spouting, and clenches her fist. Finally, when she’s had enough, Mitsuru shuts the phone with a neat flip of her wrist.

“What’d he say?” Minako croaks out, already trying to figure out how she’s going to go about damage control.

“Just some nonsense.” Mitsuru says. “No need to worry about him. We’ll take care of you, Arisato.”

Minako tries to stare her down, but eventually fatigue wins, and she drifts off to sleep as Mitsuru strokes her hair.

 

What Adachi said to Mitsuru was this: “Ah, that’s so sweet of her friends to be worried about her. You know, I love Mina-chan to bits, but sometimes she just gets so desperate for friendship that she resorts to things like this. It gets you attention, after all. Munchausen’s, I think it’s called. I’m so sorry she bothered you with this, please don’t worry about it, she’s been this way since her mom-“

He says other things, too, no doubt in that same friendly voice, but Mitsuru doesn’t hear any of them.

Mitsuru isn’t quite under Minako’s spell the way the others are. She likes the girl well enough, but she doesn’t lack for flaws. Minako is brash, reckless, and obstinate, but she has never been anything less than genuine.

She doesn’t know the story, isn’t close to Minako like Junpei and Yukari are. She’d known Minako wasn’t close to her father, but hadn’t know the details. She certainly isn’t close enough to ask for them now, but she finds herself not caring.

A man like that, she finds herself thinking, we’d all be better off forgetting about.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I measure every Grief I meet  
> With narrow, probing, Eyes--  
> I wonder if It weighs like Mine--  
> Or has an Easier size.
> 
> I wonder if They bore it long--  
> Or did it just begin--  
> I could not tell the Date of Mine--  
> It feels so old a pain--
> 
> \- I Measure Every Grief I Meet, Emily Dickinson

Minako can’t forget about Adachi.

She’s functional again, going to school and Tartarus and volleyball practice, due in large part to Mitsuru and Shinjiro’s help.

She’s been spending a lot of her time with Shinji now, especially since Akihiko seems to be avoiding her. It’s more confusing than upsetting, but if Akihiko needs time to figure things out, she’s more than willing to give it to him.

The first thing she thinks when she sees Shinji after her sickness is that Adachi would hate him. Looks like a punk, but can cook any dish to perfection? Shinji is like a perfect amalgamation of the types of people Adachi likes to look down his nose at.

That’s not the _reason_ why she starts to spend her nights with him, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

They spend a lot of time chatting, and once Shinjiro lets slip that he can cook, she immediately sets all of her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion to convincing him to cook a meal for the dorm.

And if, somewhere between taking walks together with Koromaru and sneaking samples of his cooking before he’s done, she finds that there’s a warm feeling in her chest whenever she looks at him, well then that can hardly be helped.

 

 

 

The thing with Shinji is that she’s always terrified that he’s going to run off.

It’s not fair to him, she knows, and he’s as dedicated to the cause as any of them. But whenever he walks away from her there’s a lingering fear that it’ll be the last time she’ll ever see him. She’s taken to leaving first, now, because at least that way her last memory of him, if he decides to disappear, will be of his face and not his back.

Tonight, though, she decided not to run, and more importantly, not to let him run either.

 

 

 

She wakes up in the middle of the night to a call from Adachi.

She shifts to her side so that the light from the phone doesn’t wake Shinji, but it’s too cold for her to get out from under the covers.

“What do you want?” She whispers.

“Ah, I’m not sure if I should be glad you picked up your phone so quick or angry that there’s someone with you.”

“What?” She says, almost dropping the phone.

“You’re whispering, Minako-chan. Usually, I’d have to knock you out to get your voice to get any quieter than a yell.”

“I’m not with anyone. The walls are just thin, and _you_ are reaching.”

“Mm… think what you want. I think you’re with someone, but I can’t quite guess who. Is it the kid with the bandage? I remember him hovering around your hospital room that one time. Oh, _oh,_ is it the rich bitch? She seems awfully upset when she hung up on me a few weeks ago. I haven’t forgotten about that, you know.”

Minako clenches her fists, angry that she _had_ forgotten it. Had Mitsuru drawn Adachi’s ire by believing her?

“You’re pretty quiet over there. Is it her? Oh, I bet it is. You’re one of those types aren’t you? At least in the city they had the decency to hide that shit behind closed doors. There’s so many of those freaks here in Inaba, you’re practically swimming in the gay.”

She doesn’t say anything because Adachi doesn’t seem to need a response from her, and she’d really like to minimize her interaction with him as much as possible. At her side, Shinjiro grumbles a little and then throws an arm over her lap.

“Grrhul.” He says at first, then tries again. “Go to sleep.”

“Phone.” She mouths at him.

He shakes his head disapprovingly and burrows further into his pillow. He really is adorable.

She’s zoned out of Adachi’s speech, and tunes back in just in time for the tail end of his rant.

“… honestly, these brats all remind me of you, running around town whining about their pathetic problems and acting like they own the place.”

“They fucked you over, didn’t they?” She says. “So you called your long-distance punching bag. Are they the reason no one’s died these past few weeks?”

“Shhh.” Shinji grumbles from his pillow. Minako reaches over to card a hand through his hair.

 

 

 

Adachi calls her again in the middle of the week.

“Drop whatever useless shit you’re doing over there with the rich bitches and pretty boys. You’re coming to Inaba for the week.”

She blanches. With miles between them, she could snap at Adachi all she wanted, secure that her life and the lives of the people around her were safe. She could plan out how she’d stop him, at some undefined point in the future, without having to consider what it’d really be like. She could just tune out whenever he called, which was rare, and power through it the same way she would a sickness.

“No.” She says, after a pause.

“Alright.” He says easily. “But you should know I’ll be bored. Might have to throw some bitch in the TV. Who do you think I should kill next? Risette is in town, I remember how much your whore mom used to like those skinny bitches on TV.”

It’s calculated to get a rise out of her, she knows. To give him an excuse to kill whichever person pissed him off last and blame it on her. It works.

“How about you do some community service and throw yourself in instead?” She says.

“You’re so mean, Minako-chan. I guess those kids really have been a bad influence on you. Maybe I should visit. I’m sure you need some company, I heard what happened to your little boyfriend.”

She’d been upset before, but the image of Adachi in the same room as Ken makes her see red. Or Fuuka, or Akihiko, or, god, he’d probably kill Koromaru just to knock her off balance. She’s surprised to feel the sudden wetness in her eyes. She hasn’t been this scared in a long time.

There’s silence for a few minutes, just the two of them listening to her breathing. She tries to talk a few times, but she doesn’t know what to say. Her head hurts, and all her energy is devoted to not crying tears of frustration.

She wants, suddenly, to talk to Shinji, to have him undercut all her problems in that simple, no nonsense way of his. Her heart seizes- she misses everything about him, and she wants more than anything to run to his hospital room and squeeze his hand, pretending that he’s awake and squeezing back.

He’s not, though. And Minako is more than experienced in pushing through her grief.

“Wow. I haven’t gotten you to shut up in a while. Kind of unfair of you though, isn’t it? You didn’t care nearly as much when I was going to kill some rando in Inaba, but if I some much as threaten to breathe the same air as your friends you freak out. Or did you finally mature a little? They did tell me it’s good for kids to lose a pet, teaches them about life…I guess that punk was good for something, then.”

“Shut up,” she breathes. “Just stop talking. Please. I’ll come.”

“Good girl.” She can just imagine him smiling pleasantly. It was the smile she hated the most, the one that said _there you go again, acting like a child, but that’s alright._

“Oh and Minako?” He says. “Bring a friend.”

 

 

 

Inaba is the kind of town Adachi should hate.

Minako wouldn’t hate it, she supposes, but she’d always choose the city before these sleepy nowhere places. Towns like Inaba are too small, claustrophobic, even. She likes to know that she can walk five minutes and lose herself in a crowd of people, walking and talking and living around her, and that she could at any minute pluck any one of them out from the throng and they’d have a life so uniquely _them_ that it could take her breath away.

One of the many, many, things that Adachi could never accept about her was that she’d never faked her interest in anyone. She really did care about that old couple and the persimmon tree, and Akihiko’s obsession with protein and even about Saori-chan’s past. It was only ever Adachi who’d had to pretend to care about other people to get by.

No, Minako isn’t likely to get bored, not even in such a little town, but that doesn’t mean she has to relish the isolation.

It doesn’t escape her attention, either, the advantages this has. There’s only been a few deaths, and a half dozen disappearances, but in the city this would have been a horror show; cops covering the streets, televisions playing the stories over and over. People would be called to solve the problem, to figure out what was going on.

No one really cared about what was going on in Inaba.

She waits for Adachi by the train station, alternating between shivering against the cold and trying to prevent Aigis from shooting any of the passerbys who get a little too close to her.

She ended up asking Aigis to come because, well, she trusts Aigis to have her back, and to do what she asks, and to not get hurt by Adachi. It’s the last one that she cares about most, but she can’t deny that she’s more comfortable with Aigis next to her.

“Remember what I said, alright?” She says with a smile, because she’s visiting a new town with a friend and the weather is nice, and there are kids laughing across the street and she will _not_ let Adachi ruin this. “Don’t trust my dad no matter what, okay? And don’t talk to him unless you have to. Actually, just don’t talk to him. If he talks to you, just walk away, alright? And…”

 _And if he tries anything, feel free to shoot him,_ is what she wants to say, but she decides against it.

“And remember to have fun!” She says instead.

 “Understood.” She says, although her slow blink makes Minako think that she doesn’t understand after all.

 

 

 

Adachi is only ten minutes late to pick them up. Well, he’s technically three hours late to pick them up, but Minako had considered how likely he was to purposely be late just to show off that her time belongs to him, and decided to take a later train.

“Sorry I’m late.” He says, playing to tradition and starting off with a lie. “I hope you didn’t have to wait too long.”

“Nope.” She says with no small measure of pleasure. “Not at all.”

His smile doesn’t fall, exactly, but it does slip slightly. She takes her victories where she can.

He kills someone she loves, she gets him fired. He moves to another city and starts murdering indiscriminately, she changes her travel plans. Small and insignificant, but it’s about all she can do right now, short of just jumping him. She might even manage to take him down, with Aigis here.

No. That’s not an option. She’s not like him. She’s _not_ a killer _._

Well, she might not be able to stop Adachi from being a murderous bastard just yet, but in the mean time she can make sure that he’s a miserable murderous bastard.

 

 

 

Visiting the Dojimas immediately explains both Adachi’s recent happiness and the sharp edge to his gaze. 

He’s been unnaturally engaged this whole time- he’d always been energetic, at least on the surface, and Minako had come to prefer the contemptuous spirit over his more dangerous lethargic moods, but now he seemed to be bordering on manic. It hadn’t helped that Aigis had proven entirely impervious to his attempts at flustering her with double entendres and creepy hovering. With every failed attempt, Adachi seemed more and more determined, and it gave Minako no small amount of pleasure to see him beat his head against a wall.

But the Dojimas hadn’t been anything like what she’d imagined- no beautiful, doting mother, no hard-working, stern father, no charming and precocious child for Adachi to covet and detest.

Instead, she’d been introduced to Dojima-san, a gruff and imposing man who watched everyone with tired, suspicious eyes. Dojima himself wouldn’t have kept her attention for long, if it hadn’t been for the sudden change he inspired in Adachi, who switched to looking at him with barely concealed puppy dog eyes.

Whatever affection he may have had for Dojima, he clearly had none for his nephew, who he watched like a hawk, under the excuse of being fascinated by his high school hijinks. He watches Souji, and he watches her watching Souji, and he watches Souji watching her, and Minako realizes with a sinking feeling in her gut what he wants from her.

Souji himself doesn’t seem like much at first glance. He’s handsome, but lots of people are handsome, and that’s hardly enough to earn Adachi’s wariness. All through the introductions she keeps an eye on him, but he’s never anything other than politely charming.

It isn’t until they sit and begin to eat that she starts to understand. As they eat, ostensibly sharing pleasant small talk, she begins to realize that Souji hasn’t stopped looking at her from the moment she entered the room. Even when he seems to be looking at someone else, that peculiar feeling of being watched never goes away, and she can tell that he is still aware of her presence.

It’s a useful skill he has, and one that betrays a certain underlying intelligence and patience that bodes poorly for anyone trying to hide from him, but there are few things Minako hates more than the sensation of being picked apart by someone else.

The ability to make someone come apart just by looking, by watching, terrifies her. She’s only ever been privy to what people chose to share with her, and she’s never wanted any more. She thinks of Ken crying over Shinjiro, choking on the weight of his guilt and the unbearable loss that he should never have had to survive. The world does enough in the way of deconstructing people, she decides, there’s no need for her to add to their burdens.

 

 

Halfway through dinner they’re interrupted by a young, gangly boy who introduces himself as Yosuke Hanamura, Souji’s partner.

Adachi seems mildly disgusted by him, which makes her warm to him immediately. Few things could be better proof of his strength of character.

Yosuke isn’t much to look at, which is strange, considering that his everything about him seems to demand to be looked at. He’s wearing bright red pants, his voice doesn’t seem to have a volume below maximum, and he looks at everyone with skittish, expectant glances. Well, not everyone. The way he looks at Souji has nothing in common with the way he looks at them.

She can’t spend too long looking at Yosuke though, because Souji catches her at it once and fixes her with a blank but loaded look that leaves her suddenly sheepish.

That’s fine with her. It doesn’t matter what Adachi wants. She feels a little sick as she watches them, clearly on the verge of something, hopeful and full of possibility. Then she’s ashamed of her jealousy, which is even worse.

Yosuke’s arrival signals a turning point in the night, with Dojima and Adachi politely separating themselves and going to drink together on the porch. Adachi doesn’t bother to send her any significant glances or parting looks. She feels the weight of his expectation all the same.

“So, Souji-kun,” she begins, flashing him a wide smile, “I hear you work just about a billion jobs.”

“Yeah,” Yosuke interjects, “he’s always running around working for someone or another. I swear you run errands for half the town, partner.”

Minako’s hands clench in her lap. She doesn’t want to be here, listening to accounts of this perfect boy, who not only has everything she has, by right instead of by deception, but also what she’s just lost. Aigis looks over at her, blank faced.

“I try to keep busy,” Souji says with an amused shake of his head that charms her despite herself, “but I doubt you’re much behind me, Adachi-san.”

Her smiles freezes in place.

“It’s Arisato, actually.”

“Arisato?” He asks, still looking at her with those blank eyes.

“I use my mother’s name.”

“Oh. That’s a little strange.” Souji says in the same careful way, as if everything he says is both extremely important to him and supremely mundane.

“I guess we’re a couple of odd birds then- me with my name, you living with your uncle… Are your parents off abroad? They must have really cool jobs then.”

“Ah, I don’t know much about it, to be honest. Not like your dad, of course, Adachi has been a real help to my uncle.” Souji smiles, unperturbed.

Minako can’t tell whether it’s an act. She’s never seen someone who seemed so frank and so empty- as if he took in the world without pretense, and without ever being touched by it.

“Ah,” he says, leaning into her space “you’ve finished your tea, let me-“

He’s stopped in his tracks by Aigis standing abruptly and throwing an arm out, effectively creating a wall between him and Minako.  His brows rise infinitesimally, which is probably as close as he comes to surprise.

“Cease and desist.” Aigis stares down at Souji, towering over him and pinning him with a gaze devoid of all emotion, not unlike his own. “Stay away from Minako. You are a threat.”

“Dude,” Yosuke says, looking from Aigis to Minako as he rushes to his feet in support of his still seated partner. He yelps as Aigis’ hand begins to shift strangely in the early stages of a transformation into a weapon. “What the fuck?”

Minako tries to respond, but she doesn’t manage more than a hiss, since she’s mainly focused on dragging Aigis back down next to her and defusing the situation before Aigis brings out the cannons.

Drawn by the noise, Adachi and Dojima come back in, faces set in matching looks of parental exasperation. They take in the scene before them: Aigis sitting perfectly still next to a slightly flushed but otherwise picturesque Minako, with Yosuke standing, clearly riled up, and pointing wildly at them both. Souji sits as serenely as ever, hands still clasped around the teapot like some highborn lady in a painting.

“Hanamura…” Dojima sighs loudly and rubs a hand over his brow.

Looking at him, bone-deep calm amidst all the chaos, understands why Adachi had dragged her all the way from Tatsumi Port. Seta Souji is the most frustrating person she’s ever met.

 

 

 

Adachi’s house is a dump.

There is one clearly new addition to the apartment, though. Photos of her family are framed and placed all around, covering walls and tables. They only ever feature her, Minato, and their mother. Adachi liked to pretend he didn’t know them as much as possible, and they’d been more than happy to forget about him in return.

 “I thought it’d bring a touch of warmth to the house, y’know? Like having the old gang back together again.” Adachi smiles at her when she sees them.

He likes to fuck with her whenever possible, she’s always known that. Petty cruelties like this used to be his favorite kind, before he’d graduated to stringing people up with antennas.

But their recent distance has affected him more than her. She never pretended to understand anything about Adachi, but he’d always enjoyed thinking that he knew her inside and out. Before, he’d been mostly right. Now, though, she’s through feeling sorry for herself, and the images of her family do nothing but remind her who she is, and what she needs to do.

And she has fresh griefs to nurse. As much as it feels like a betrayal to her mother and to Minato, the truth is that their death has retreated to some place deep inside of her where it can only touch her if she lets it.

Sometimes she does let it, just to remember that overwhelming pain, the grief that felt like it was going to shake her inside out so her heart could fall out of her ribs. On her worst days she thinks that the memory of that feeling is probably all the separates her from Adachi.

 

 

She finds Souji exactly where Adachi had said he’d be- fishing in the early morning at the Samegawa Flood Plain.

There’s no way she’s leaving Aigis in the house alone, and Aigis never likes to let Minako out of her sight anyways, so they head out together at dawn. Minako savours the walk over to the plains, though it takes more than an hour. It’s nice to walk in companionable silence with someone she trusts. It only took Adachi twenty-four hours, after months of separation, but already her life in Tatsumi Port Island seems like a dream. It feels like she’s being sucked back into a vortex where nothing exists except her, Adachi, and their ghosts.

Think of Shinji, she thinks. That’s a new pain, a new cut that keeps her firmly grounded in the present.

Glancing at Aigis, whose watchful eyes are monitoring their peaceful surroundings, ready to neutralize any threats, she knows she made the right choice. Aigis is strong, incorruptible, and hellbent on saving Minako. That’s what she needs most right now, when faced with the impossible to tangle of threats that characterized Minako’s life before S.E.E.S.

Still, she makes sure to park Aigis on a bench before heading over. She’s not sure if she’s succeeding in convincing Aigis that, though Souji is certainly no normal, defenseless teenage boy, he doesn’t need to be exterminated. Then again, she’s not quite sure of that herself.

 

 

Souji sits unmoving, looking over the lake with a serene gaze.

She wonders if it’s true, if he really is as unshakably calm as he seems. He seems one with the still waters around him, deep and impenetrable, with no one capable of creating more than the slightest ripples in the surface. She hates him for it, a little.

“Morning,” she chirps as she settles down next to him.

“Good morning,” Souji says, “I didn’t expect to see you so early this morning.”

“You expected to see me?”

“It seemed like you were interested in talking to me.”

“Mmm, but you don’t seem all that interested in talking to me, Souji-kun. Is it because of your partner? I didn’t mean to get between you two.”

Souji turns, holding her in place with those steadfast eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I never meant to make you feel unwelcome.”

She doesn’t say anything, looking for any hints of disingenuousness. Has she really become so paranoid, so insular and secretive, that just the sensation of being seen, really seen, by someone with the capability to see the truth of things, feels like an attack on her being?

Minako thinks of herself as an honest person- she doesn’t lie if she can help it, and she tries not to lie to herself either. But isn’t that what she’d been doing? Hiding from everyone in S.E.E.S., from all of her friends, the most important thing in her life, the central thing that had shaped her entire existence? How could she call herself an honest person? She, who laughed carelessly with Junpei and Yukari, who listened to Mitsuru and Akihiko talk strategy all through the night, who carded her fingers through Shinjiro’s hair, all the while hiding the core of her being, the primordial call that reminded her that her story already had a beginning and an end: Adachi.

Hadn’t she felt just the tiniest bit relieved when Adachi had called? Hadn’t she wanted away from Tatsumi Port, so that she could vacation in someone else’s tragedy and pretend that Shinijiro was a distant memory?

There was no room for illusions in front of Souji’s gaze, and she was a creature who’d only ever survived by clinging to them. No wonder he made her uncomfortable.

“Besides,” Souji says, breaking her from her thoughts, the smallest hint of a blush on his cheeks, “there’s nothing between Yosuke and me.”

She looks at him from the corner of her eye, and lets out a breath.

Souji isn’t like her, and he wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t know about Adachi, and she isn’t strong enough to tell him. But with those eyes fixed on him, she knows Adachi won’t be able to hide for much longer.

 

 

 

Adachi isn’t happy with her when she comes back. He knows, somehow, that she has nothing to tell him.

“You know,” he begins conversationally, “there’s no reason for you to leave so soon. You can stay here until you find out something useful about Souji-kun. He’s under investigation for the murders, though his uncle won’t admit it.”

Minako freezes for a moment, then curses her own cowardice.

“You’re the cop, Adachi. Not me. Even you can’t be so lazy as to get your teenage daughter to do your job for you.”

Adachi laughs as if she were joking around, and walks over to place a hand on her shoulder, a mockery of a fatherly touch.

“Ah, you’re just like your mother, Mina-chan,” his fingers dig in as she tenses, “always so mean… I just figured you’d wanna be involved, what with how you’re always hanging around the cops in Tatsumi Port Island. I mean, even back in Sumaru City, you always seemed to have a lot to say to my buddies.”

She had, actually, and she’d said it. That’s what got him sent to the sticks.

“Maybe I just wanted you to have more time to spend with your family.” She shrugs as she says it, not even bothering to pretend she means it.

“Mm, family…. Interesting concept, isn’t it? I mean, what a load of bullshit! Look at Dojima, running himself into the ground trying to protect his bitch sister’s no good whelp, when that brat clearly needs a few good years in prison to wipe that insufferable expression off his face.”

Minako hadn’t really thought Souji _had_ any expressions, other than serenity. That’s probably what pissed off Adachi the most, that he couldn’t rile Souji up and play with him the way he could anyone else.

“Are you seriously jealous of Dojima’s nephew? Talk about creepy…”

“And then there was your brother, of course. Arrogant brat. He’s better off where he is,” Adachi continues as if she hadn’t even spoken, caught up in his own monologue, “and I’d like to send that Seta brat there as soon as possible. It’s a shame I couldn’t do it so stylishly with your brother…”

Her grip on her knees is starting to get painful. Just stay calm, she thinks, and for a second flashes back to the way Souji looked in the morning light, more like a statue than a boy.

“Just say what you want from me so we can both be rid of each other.”

“Come on, Mina-chan, are you really that dumb? I want dirt on the brat, obviously.”

“Does he know it’s you?”

“Of course not, he’s an idiot, they’re all fucking idiots, this town is made of imbeciles. I tossed the blame on some pathetic kid I found wandering the streets, crying because he didn’t have any friends. Dumbass thought he’d actually be worth something if he could ride on my coattails. Seta pisses me off though.”

“I won’t do it.”

He pauses in his pacing, and the sudden flip, from incessant movement to focused stillness jolts her, makes her sit up at attention. Being looked at by Adachi, is kind of like being looked at by Souji, only a thousand times worse.

He takes his time responding. She doesn’t bother to steel herself. When Adachi gets like this, there’s nothing to do but hold on and hope.

“That’s funny,” he says finally, “I thought getting that mongrel killed would’ve knocked you down a few pegs. I mean, how dumb can you really be? What did you think was going to happen, really, Minako-chan? Did you think life was like one of those silly mangas you love so much? Didn’t I kick that out of you early on?”

She looks resolutely at the wall opposite her, trying to blink back tears.

“I mean did you really think that little brat wasn’t going to off him eventually? Hah, I bet you knew and you just pretended not to see. All you’re good for is hiding your head in the sand. Can’t even get fucking Seta’s attention. Kid obviously has some fucked up god complex- why don’t you go be a good girl and cry on his lap? Why d’you think I called you, huh?”

“Shut up. Stop talking or I’ll kill you. I swear, I’ll do it.”

She’s crying now, and she hates herself for it. She hasn’t cried in years. She never wanted to do anything but smile, and mean it, but now sobs are wracking her entire body, and she curls in on herself in an attempt to hide it.

“Go on, then,” Adachi says, “take your best shot.”

 

 

 

She doesn’t kill Adachi.

After he gets bored of her tears, he lets her escape to the shopping district. She’d sent Aigis there hours ago, and she was no doubt still trying to find all the made up items on the shopping list.

But as she reaches the strip, she finds it more and more difficult to go on, instead sitting on the curb in front of some fabric shop.

It’s too hard to be her right now, so she loses herself in everybody around her. She imagines their lives, their joy and sorrows, their achievements and discontents. She falls in love with the city around her a little bit, and admits to herself that she’d loved Shinijiro more than anyone else in the world.

He’s not gone- saved by a little scrap of metal, but he’s stuck in a dreamless sleep, with no way to tell when, if ever, he’ll wake up. She wouldn’t have brought him to Inaba even if he’d still been with her, but she suspects he’d have tagged along anyways.

She’s caught in a perverse daydream that involves her and Shinji dangling Adachi out from a window when she hears the door behind her jingle and two sets of footsteps walk out. One settles down next to her, and she knows without looking that it’s Souji.

He doesn’t turn to look at her, instead staring out at the street and the passersby in front of him.

She lets the silence go on as long as she can before she asks.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

“Well,” he said, after a pause, “aren’t you tired of being looked at?”

It takes her a minute.

Sure, she was tired of the looks she got at the dorm, of the double expectations for her to fall apart and keep it together. She’d been chosen leader and she’d loved it- the power, the adrenaline. She couldn’t back down. But if she was too put together, too okay, well then she was being callous, abandoning and dismissing Shinji like so many others had.

She was tired of the sharp, painful glances Adachi gave her, the ones that made her want to crawl out of her own skin and dissipate into the air. She’d been born tired of those looks. Minato had just been born tired.

“Do your questions send everyone into an existential crisis?” She asks him instead.

“Yeah, sort of,” Souji grimaces ever so slightly, “I don’t mean to do it, usually. I guess I don’t have much of a filter.”

She looked at him, frozen, eyes wide. His lips quirked to the side, an expressive tic she hadn’t expected from him, and he finally turned to face her. Their eyes met, and then they burst into laughter, far too loud and too long for either the setting or the context.

“My parents got tired of me looking at them,” he said once their hysteria had died down, “that’s why they sent me here.”

Her remaining mirth dies instantly, solidifying into a central core of unease. Souji seems unperturbed, as if he’d just commented on the weather. She wonders if he wants her to comfort him, if it’s a ploy to get her to open up.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I guess I figured I should tell somebody. You seemed like you’d understand.”

“Your friends wouldn’t understand?”

“They didn’t ask.”

She quiets for a moment, settling her chin on her knees, then says quietly: “Neither did I.”

He was silent for a while. She thought he seemed upset, but honestly, she couldn’t make anything from his expression, no matter how hard she started.

“No, they wouldn’t understand.” He said eventually.

She knew he was talking about more than just his ambiguous relationship with his parents. Souji was such a blank slate, a mind of unperturbable stillness, that it was easy to forget that he existed outside each particular movement, each particular interaction. As if he was constantly wiped clean- of hurt, of baggage, of context, so that only wary acceptance and sharp truth was left behind.

But Souji was, like everyone, created by a larger past that she wasn’t privy to, and she was beginning to admit to herself she didn’t want to be aware of.

They were nothing to each other, at best transient figure in the stream of their lives, but sitting next to him felt right, as if they were brothers-in-arms taking a respite in between battles, each too weighed down with scars and regrets to offer the other anything but their stories.

She takes a deep breath, and then she starts.

“Six months ago, I moved to Tatsumi Port Island…”

 

 

 

She’s sitting in a graveyard when Mitsuru calls her back.

It probably seemed morbid to everyone else. Even Aigis had seemed confused when she’d told her the plan for the day.

Her brother wasn’t buried in Inaba.

She didn’t know if he was buried at all, but that was okay. Funerals were for the living, not the dead. She likes to imagine Minato not as laying in a grave, but as wandering peaceably with his headphones plugged in. He’d always been happiest like that: on his own, with his music and a world to explore. She only hopes that a spirit will hear her and pass on the message.

She can imagine it perfectly- first his annoyance at having to step out of his own world, followed by an amused shake of his head as he listens to her ramblings.

 _I wish you could meet my friends,_ she thinks, _I bet you’d love them. Mitsuru-senpai reminds me of you, actually, always acting cool and collected, but really…_

_Shinji’s like that too. You’ll look out for him, right, if he ends up on your side of the fence? I really did love him so much._

It hurts to think about Shinji, but less than it had when she’d spoken to Souji earlier that morning. She’d spent the whole day talking to Souji, mostly about Shinji, occasionally about the others in the dorm, particularly Akihiko. Aki, who probably needed her now. Or maybe he wanted her gone, so he could heal in peace away from the constant reminder of her, another idiot just like him who had decided to lean on a dying man.

Souji had asked her, at the end of their conversation, about who she’d been before Tatsumi Port Island.

“Ask me next time,” she’d finally said, “and I’ll tell you.”

He’d looked at her with dull surprise. Clearly he hadn’t expected there to be a next time.

“I didn’t think you’d want to come back,” he said lightly.

“Why not?”

“It makes you unhappy to be here. You shouldn’t do things that hurt you. You don’t deserve that.”

She’d smiled and said nothing, swallowing down the strange feeling at her throat.

“I’ll come back here one last time. I’m not done just yet.”

And it was true. She felt more than a little guilty about not telling anyone about Adachi, but she figured it’d be fine. He was too much a coward to keep going after coming so close to getting caught. If it hadn’t been for Mitsuo…

It didn’t matter now. She had the time she needed. Once she wrapped up everything with Tartarus she’d come back here. She’d stop him before he could go somewhere new and start again.

 _The next time I see you, Shinji,_ she promises, _I’ll be smiling, for real this time. And I’ll have won._

 

 

 

Mitsuru meets her at the edge of town, gliding in on an improbably long limousine.

“Hello, Arisato. Aigis.” She says, her voice the same deep dash of certainty its become ever since she’d nursed her to health after her sickness.

She lets Aigis sit down, then settles down next to her, making herself comfortable and laying her head against the cyborg’s shoulder.

“You’re returning earlier than planned.” Mitsuru says in response to her murmured greeting.

“I realized there wasn’t anything here for me.”

“And your father?” Mitsuru asks, eyeing her carefully for a minute. When no response is forthcoming, she says, “Well, we’re glad to have you back regardless. Shall we celebrate with a trip to Tartarus?”

“Affirmative. This is a recommended course of action.”

Minako smiles into the curve of Aigis’ neck.

“Sure. Whatever you guys want.”

“No need to run into battle tonight, of course, if you want time to rest.” Mitsuru gave her a subdued smile, still giving her that considering look, no doubt searching for cracks made by losing Shinjiro, by the imaginary emergency that had drawn her to Inaba, by the endless battle of their quest.

Minako reflected back her smile. That heavy consideration, so terrifying from Adachi and so disconcerting from Souji, became warm and comforting now that it was infused with real affection and friendship.

She links fingers with Aigis as they drive, sleepy Podunk Inaba eventually fading into sprawling fields and later reforming into the bustling the structure of the city. Mitsuru spends the whole trip planning future endeavours, either for S.E.E.S. or student council. Minako lets her voice wash over, occasionally offering words of encouragement or caution. She’s never heard Mitsuru talk so much at once before. Had she been that relieved to find Minako unharmed and more or less alright?

Not for the first time, Minako wonders what exactly Adachi had said to Mitsuru, and how much she knew.

As she considers the possibilities and what they would mean for her, they pull up in front of the dorm.

She hesitates for a moment, letting Aigis and Mitsuru exit first. Then, with a deep, steadying breath, she follows them out, shaking off the residual nerves.

Mitsuru and Aigis are waiting for her on the steps. From the window she can see Junpei and Yukari in a vigorous argument, waving hands and giggling between retorts. Ken and Koromaru sit together, conversing seriously and occasionally giving the boisterous duo bewildered looks. Fuuka and Akihiko sit swaying at the desk, somehow deaf to the commotion around them. Her heart aches suddenly, and she realizes all at once just how badly she missed them, how much she wanted to be smiling and laughing among them now.

She takes one decisive step forward, and then another.

 _Don’t worry about me, Shinji,_ she thinks, _I’m home._

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When here  
> humour the gods.
> 
> If questioned,  
> blame them!
> 
> \- Graffiti for Palatine, Ewan Whyte

It’s almost disturbingly easy for Minako to put Inaba out of her mind once she comes back. Adachi stops calling her, stops acknowledging her existence at all. She thinks maybe the radio silence should worry. Instead it makes her feel, for the first time in her entire existence, that she’s truly free.

She throws herself into training–early morning runs with Akihiko, bout after bout of sparring with Junpei, even late-night planning sessions with Mitsuru. She feels stronger than before, and more than that: faster, lighter, braver. As if she’s been streamlined, somehow.

She doesn’t worry about Adachi. She doesn’t even carry around the anger that she’d hidden for so long, pushing it down so resolutely for so many years that it had crystallized at the core of her. She wonders if she’s finally absorbed some of her mother’s infallible kindness. Or perhaps her brother’s unfazeable attitude, the one that let him take in everything without blinking.

Or perhaps what she’s feeling is Shinji’s indomitable strength – but this one is a furtive thought, one that she runs from when she notices it. Shinji is only gone for a little while, after all.  She’s just keeping his soul warm for him.

In her darkest moments, she wonders if what she’s feeling is the same recklessness that always frightened her most about her father.

 

 

When she finally ( _finally_ –as if she always knew her life was going to end up this way) meets Ryoji in November, she knows that something irreversible has occurred. If she’d been floating before, a bird letting herself be swept away, untethered from her father and her fate, then Ryoji is a poison that makes her bones heavy and her wings weak.

Oh, but what a poison.

Ryoji slips into their lives so easily that it seems he must always have been there. Junpei laughs with him and Yukari scolds him and Minako – well, Minako turns to him when she laughs, always feeling his presence in the room. It feels as if the two of them are being pulled down to some central point of gravity.

For a long time, she can’t put a finger on who it is he reminds her of. Then she realizes: all it would take is a different haircut, a different expression, and he could be a mirror image of Minato.

She watches him differently after that.

 

 

They don’t go to Tartarus as often, now that the twelve Greater Shadows have been defeated.

Each of them takes turns making half-hearted noises about how they should refocus their efforts on more important things, now that the threat seems to be mostly over and graduation is approaching. But the mystery of the tower still beckons to them all, and they can’t stop themselves from visiting once a week.

No more, no less. Minako can’t quite figure if they’re stagnating or getting ready for some grand finale.

Her nights free, she starts frequenting a local nightclub. Even makes friends with that shady TV guy, Tanaka. He keeps asking her for money, but she doesn’t really mind. She has a feeling she won’t need it much longer anyway.

 

 

The upperclassmen keep themselves at a suspicious distance from Ryoji, looking at him eyes that are amused but wary. That doesn’t mean much–after everything, Mitsuru and Akihiko have become wearier than the rest of them, unwilling to hope or trust easily. This makes their faith in her all the more precious.

Ever since she’s come back from Inaba, Mitsuru has developed a hawk-like twitch, always following Minako around the room, checking to make sure she’s okay. Junpei and Yukari are weirded out and often ask if Minako is feeling stifled or needs space. It’s a little shocking, sure, but it makes Minako feel warm somewhere deep inside.

Akihiko’s eyes also follow her too, these days. At first, she thinks it’s some machination of Mitsuru’s, that she’s enlisted another pair of eyes to watch over Minako when she can’t, but Mitsuru’s gaze never has the kind of heat as Akihiko’s. Especially when he sees Ryoji flirting with her. It makes her wonder–

It makes her wonder what Shinji would think of Ryoji.

 

 

 

She realizes that she’s acting somewhat strangely around the third time she bursts into tears while hugging Maiko to her chest. Sure, she’s sad that the little girl is moving away, but they’ve promised to write each other, and Maiko’s father had even awkwardly attempted to bring her into the family by asking her out. Somehow, that had made her burst into tears too. The poor man looked more frightened than she’s ever seen anyone look before.

Ryoji also has a habit of making her cry. He doesn’t do anything, exactly, but when they’re alone he’s so different from his usual flirtatious self that it leaves her feeling off-balance and a little insecure. Sometimes he’ll just hold her hand and look sadly into the distance.

Each time, she asks him what’s wrong, and he says that he doesn’t quite understand it himself. And then they’re both blinking away tears.

 

 

 

Despite the strange atmosphere outside, despite her untrustworthy emotions, despite the sharp edge to Tartarus that they’ve all noticed recently, Minako has never felt safer or closer to her family.

Not just her old one, although she feels close to them too: she still sees her mother and brother out of the corner of her vision. She still doesn’t turn to look. But even without turning, she can feel them, every second of every day, protecting her and giving her the strength to keep going, to keep everyone safe. Sometimes it even seems like her brother is trying to say something to her, and if she focuses enough she can hear a soft hissing accompanied by the feel of air brushing past her ears.

But next to these precious apparitions she sees Junpei and Yukari and Fuuka and Ken and Koromaru and Aigis and her Senpai. Shinji’s watch is a warm weight around her wrist. She’s happy, and she almost isn’t guilty about it.

Something’s coming, she knows that. But she also knows that S.E.E.S. can handle it, that she can win any battle if it means protecting her family, old and new.

Of course, the moment she realizes this is when Ryoji bursts into her room and proves her catastrophically, irredeemably wrong.

 

 

Everyone is arguing about what to do.

Although people are bandying about ideas and angrily snapping at each other, she knows that ultimately all of them will come to the same conclusion. They’ve spent too long fighting, suffering the slings and arrows of the world, trudging determinedly forwards despite the spectre of death at their shoulder, to do anything else.

But no matter what everyone else thinks, the decision ultimately comes down to Minako and Ryoji. They have the same soul, after all. No wonder he looks just like her brother, her quieter half.

She knows she should resist, should fight heroically until the end, Sisyphus staring up at the cruel gods and choosing to move the boulder anyways, but she likes the poetry of Ryoji’s choice. Didn’t they all deserve to be happy, after everything? How cruel of the world, how selfish and short-sighted, to make them all suffer so and then expect them to save it.

And, of course, there is part of her that likes the idea of Adachi living out his last days in a graying world, trying to pretend to himself that he isn’t frightened of what’s coming, and never knowing that it was her decision, that she’d traded him, his favoured threat (the future), and his favourite playthings (the world and all her people), for a few quiet months with her friends.

 

 

 

A few days later, she finds herself on the roof of the school next to Akihiko.

They’re avoiding talking about Ryoji by avoiding talking about their feelings (Akihiko–in love but confused about it; Minako–in love but guilty about it.)

Akihiko is eyeing her out of the corner of his eye, no doubt trying to control himself from arguing that they should face the challenge head on. He’d done his share of yelling that first night, and Minako’s uncharacteristic silence hadn’t escaped anyone’s attention.

“Minako,” he starts, and then falls silent, unsure.

She holds his gaze for a second, and then thinks with a sinking feeling that he, of all of them, deserved so much better. Even now, as she realizes what she needs to do, she wants better for him, a future where he gets to be happy, maybe even a future where that happiness includes her.  

“There’s something you need to know about me, in case this all goes sideways,” she says, trying to communicate through her gaze everything she feels for him.

It must not work, because he looks at her with nothing more than confusion (a running theme between the two of them) and mild wariness. When he sees her obvious distress, his face morphs into one of determined protectiveness, his hand reaching out, seemingly without him being aware to grab hers.

“Don’t worry.” He says, that stupidly charming smile on his face. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it together. I’ll protect you.”

She wishes he was right. And she hopes that she won’t be the one to finally dent his unwavering faith and optimism, after it had survived so many other horrific trials.

For the first time in her life, Minako opens her mouth and tells her someone her story. All of it this time, without any white lies to soften the blow.

 

 

 

That night, she finds herself alone in the common room except for Ken, who has fallen asleep with his head in her lap. She cards her fingers through his hair while staring at his sleeping face wistfully. What was the suffering of a few people, a few thousand people, even the entire world, against Ken’s little face, so angelic when it was wiped clean of its habitually worry and seriousness? Wouldn’t it all be worth it for him to have a few pain-free months?

It is to her. But this is not all about her.

From above the common room, she can hear Akihiko pounding away at his punching bag, no doubt trying to work out all his leftover aggression from this morning. Convincing Akihiko not to march down to Inaba and murder Adachi himself had taken twice as long as telling her story had. It was charming, in a somewhat concerning, knight-templar kind of way.

Hearing the rhythmic impact of Akihiko’s fist and feeling the deep rise and fall of Ken’s chest gives her the courage to do what she’d been thinking about since the first time she saw Ryoji.

She pulls out her phone, and calls her father.

 

 

 

He responds more quickly than she expects.

“Brat. What do you want? I’m busy.”

Did he sound more tired than usual? Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. Maybe he’s changed his voice just to fuck with her.

“How busy can you be? Your only crime is investigating your own crimes.”

“Ah, Mina-chan, sometimes I forget how fucking stupid you really are. It takes skill to pull off a crime so perfect, to tie up all the loose ends _just so_. I’m working on my endgame.”

 _Endgame,_ she thinks, _God, he’s so pretentious._

“Right. Well, far be it from me to drag you away from your play-time, but–“

“Maybe I’ll come down there personally and teach you some manners,” he growls suddenly.

“But I’m calling to say good-bye,” she finishes, unfazed.

“Good-bye? You must be dumber than I thought,” he says, voice growing deeper and quieter with each drawn-out syllable, “you’re down with me when I’m down you, _darling_ , not before.”

“Whatever you say,” she says, smiling, “I’m just calling one last time to tell you that, however this plays out, you’re going to owe me your life.”

“Has losing your boy toy finally made you go crazy, wow Mina-chan, you’ve really outdone yourself-“

Her smile only grows larger as she hangs up on him.

 

 

 

They decide to fight. Of course they do.

Minako is really, truly terrified, a feeling she’d thought those years living together with Adachi had beaten out of her. But she isn’t her father. She won’t let others suffer for her comfort or amusement.

And she won’t let the people she loves suffer either. This power inside her, the power shared by her and her by brother and probably Souji too, is hers for one reason alone: to protect her friends.

She’s spent more than enough of her life losing. Time to win a few and even the score.

 

 

 

 

Everything after that is a little foggy for a long time. There’d been a battle, shouts of encouragement from her friends, a long, _long_ fall, and then–

Well, she’s not quite sure what happened after. She thinks she knew yesterday, or a few days before that. Everything was slipping away so quickly. She can never keep it straight in her head.

She doesn’t even look at her phone anymore. There’s always so many texts, disturbing and strange, coming from some strange number in the countryside. Maybe they had the wrong number. Minako thinks she’d remember getting involved in something so perverse.

None of that darkness and fear seems real anyways, not while she’s basking in the sun, laying with her head on Aigis’s lap. There was something about Aigis, something niggling away in her memory… but it wasn’t worth ruining the moment for.

Above her, Aigis’s eyes are welling up with tears as the robot’s voice finally breaks. It takes a gargantuan amount of effort to raise an arm and wipe the tear, but its worth it for the blinding smile that takes over her face.

For a long time, the only sounds are Aigis’s quiet sobs and the silent rise and fall of her own breath. Her blinks get slower and slower, the pleasant warmth of the sun lulling her to an eternal sleep.

 Suddenly, the peaceful silence is broken by a shout. Is it her brother? No, she’d almost never heard him yell. She wants to turn, but she’s afraid it’d be just another apparition, another little disappointment.

Minako struggles for a few more seconds to remember the voice (it’s not her brother, no, far too loud and too sharp, but maybe someone else she knew, not a brother by blood but by bond) but ultimately she gives in to her fatigue and makes herself comfortable in Aigis’s arms, too tired of it all, to give it any more thought. She twirls a lock of Aigis’s hair between her fingers.

The sound of familiar footsteps are getting closer.

“Soon,” Aigis promises from above her, “all your friends will be here by your side.”

She’s getting sleepier. Her eyes feel heavy...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last few lines of this are taken directly from the game.


End file.
